11. Francis Bacon on Jackson Pollock:
“Jackson Pollock’s paintings might be very pretty but they’re just decoration. I always think they look like old lace.”
12. Willem de Kooning to Andy Warhol (at a party):
“You’re a killer of art, you’re a killer of beauty, you’re even a killer of laughter. I can’t bear your work!”
13. Alberto Giacometti on Pablo Picasso:
“Picasso is altogether bad, completely beside the point from the beginning except for Cubist period and even that half misunderstood…. Ugly. Old-fashioned vulgar without sensitivity, horrible in color or non-color. Very bad painter once and for all.”
14.William Blake on Peter Paul Rubens:
“To my eye Ruben’s coloring is most contemptible. His shadows are of a filthy brown somewhat the color of excrement.”
15. Francis Bacon on Henri Matisse:
“I’ve never liked his things very much, except the very, very early things… I loathe them. I can never see what there is to it, with all those squalid little forms. I can’t bear the drawings either — I absolutely hate his line. I find his line sickly.”
Comments (38)
Any famous artist out there to debase me? – - No one?
U suck
How can you call the insulter of Shepard Fairey a vandal?
30 is a compliment not an insult. duh george.
number 18 is a compliment!
[...] The list is available here. [...]
Art always reflects its time period. We are currently living in a violent theatre of the absurd.
I love picasso. I love chagall. I have read many books on both of them, and I know for a fact, that although Chagall was often jelous of Picasso, he wasn’t trying to insult him. They were buds at points (though all of Picasso’s friends were “on and off”.
Me on powhida:
take that cock out of your mouth you faggot!
This has been fun. The exchanges between critics and artists can be fun fun fun, and Whistler’s witty whittlings of John Ruskin are still around in his snarky book, The Gentle Art of Making Enemies. I’d like to share a story told to me once by the late pianist and composer, Julian White. Max Reger had just read a very bad review of one of his works, and this is the letter that he sent to that reviewer: “I am sitting in the smallest room in my house. Your review is before me. Soon it will be behind me.”
[...] – Artist on Artist Insults: Flavorwire has compiled a thoroughly enjoyable list of the 30 harshest artist-on-artist insults in history. Pablo Picasso is a popular target, while Salvador Dalí appears to have it in for everyone from Paul Cézanne to Jackson Pollock. Our favorite, however, may have to be Andy Warhol on Jasper Johns: “Oh, I think he’s great. He makes such great lunches.” [Flavorwire] [...]
Andy Warhol was brilliant. He knew his job was not as a critic; he didn’t want to talk about his work or anyone else’s. His response was in keeping with his past and personality. This was not a diss, but just a joke. Andy Warhol OWNED a Jasper Johns, and had it prominently displayed in his house. He never hung his own art work; he thought that was corny.
I thought Joni Mitchell’s dis of Bob Dylan a few years ago was pretty harsh, and right on.
Monet: ”Renoir arrived. . . . He asked me for palette, brush and canvas, and there he was, painting away alongside Manet. The latter was watching him out of the corner of his eye. . . . Then he made a face, passed discreetly near me, and whispered in my ear about Renoir: ‘He has no talent, that boy! Since you are his friend, tell him to give up painting!’”
Seems like dali sure likes to talk, i think pollack would have whooped his ass.. For the most part, it seems like a lot of lesser known artists commenting on artist with a lot of exposure.. Dont think there is anyone who doubts picasso’s significance on modern art.
Dali sucks. Related: “To Macdonald’s charge that he was always punching people, [Clement] Greenberg replied that he had formerly punched only surrealists.”
Jane is quoting from the profile on Swight MacDonald that I just read (current New Yorker). Glreenbger once socked Max Ernst in the jaw, after Ernst had emptied an ashtray on Greenberg;s head over a satty insult. Hannah Arendt approved on CLem’s American manliness. Story if in FLorence Eberfield’s bio of Greenberg.
You may insult my typing, but not my spelling. :-)
[...] Read more pissed-off, funny put-downs here. [...]
[...] carried a popular list of 30 artist-on-artist put downs from the renaissance right up to the very present day. As they say, [...]
My wife on abstract art: ” It’s fine. The problem is that one cannot stop thinking at the color of the sofa you must put right down it”.
Renoir is one to talk about being a bore.
Leonardo about Michelangelo: ‘he does the bodies seem like of potatoes bags’
number 3 is the best
I am upset because no one dissed that phoney Thomas Kinkade. Oh, I guess it is up to me:
Frightening houses with erie light
Religion everywhere! That gives a fright
Mass produced for the masses on silkscreen presses
Giving real art and artists distresses
28 and 29 just made me raise up from my bed and howl a little. that exchange is great! I’ve always thought Leightons were over articulated:)
hannah is right…18 is a compliment. and so is 19.
Surprised Basquiat didn’t get dissed. It’s so easy after all.
Thomas Kinkade is not an artist. No other dissing is required.
Bacon said when referring to Rothko…”if I wanted to get depressed I would unroll a bolt of maroon fabric”.
i have numerous works of all these people they all have a skrew loose
thats why we love them
I love it…
Funny story…I recently got into trouble posting a negative opinion of some recent art contests, some of the winners and Judging..some notable artists which I wont name got “into it “with me online…telling me I should not be saying what I said{I think they took it personally! I was told to drink a beer and chill! LOL!
Nothing from film or.literature?
No Sonntag? No Stein? No barthes?
No one attacking Barnett Newman? De Koonig?
Schiel?
Oh well, always room for another list.
Thanks for this one, it gave me an appetite for invective.
@damien- “Nothing from film or.literature?”
Except for our filmmaker-on-filmmaker and author-on-author lists. The links to them are covertly hidden in the, um, first sentence.
Leonardo “…bores me. He ought to have stuck to his flying machines.” Renoir, you eejit!
“An artist cannot speak about his art any more than a plant can discuss horticulture.”
Jean Cocteau
Peasants are often portrayed by peasants’ words. Touche.
I am the greatest offense alive. Science will win in the end. Art will burn.
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